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13.OrganizationalJustice.pptx

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Organizational Justice

The Sanction Function….the Forth Function

The Sanction Function:

Every organization, public, private, or nonprofit must establish and maintain terms of the relationship between employee and employer…

Terms in an employment relationship are captured in expectations employees have of their employer and contributions employees are willing to make in order to have their expectations fulfilled.

Employers have expectations of employees and contribute to them so those expectations are fulfilled.

While the expectations and obligations may informally comprise part of a psychological contract, many are also captured formally in a policy documents and in the law itself.

The heart of the sanction function involves the interplay of these various expectations and contributions or obligations.

Establishing and Maintaining Expectations….

Sources of employees expectations:

They range from the law to casual conversations from folks located in the industry…

Sources of employer expectations:

Again they are influence by the law as well as organizational needs, comparisons with other organizations, and the character of the workplace..

Question: What are the mechanism by which these expectations are recognized?

The personnel manual…

The terms of the employment relationship that resulted from collective bargaining between employer and union…

Various local, state, and federal laws and legal obligations…

The sanction function if different for public employment than from private sector employment. When citizens become employees of the government they give up some of these rights while on the job….

Note: Various processes maintain and enforce the terms established through these four mechanisms…

Maintaining Great Expectations…

Before employees sue their employer for violating some “right” the organization try's to handle the disagreement through some sort of informal meeting between employee and supervisor.

But when informal channels are inadequate, formal discipline and grievance procedures that involve due process, are invoked…

Sometimes, if those prove ineffective in resolving differences, the employee may complain directly to elected officials or take judicial action….

This process which establishes and maintain expectations and obligations are as important as to what those expectations and obligations actually are …..their substance.

The Sanction Function in Alternate Personnel Systems…

The mechanisms for establishing the terms of the employment relationship and the various processes for maintaining or enforcing those terms can be significantly different depending upon which personnel system the employee is a part of.

Because it’s the rules of the personnel system that establishes the sanction function and how it’s maintained.

Unfortunately when there is not an agreement between the worker and the employer the impacted employee may “strike” (or a work slow down, or Blue flue) to see where they legally stand in regards to setting and enforcing expectations between the employees and organization.

Unions and the Civil Service System…

The labor movement was an organized effort for the working people to organize themselves into a group (a union) in order to bring about better working conditions and treatment from their employers and, through the implementation of labor and employment law, their governments.

A labor (or trade) union is an organization of workers who have come together to achieve common goals such as protecting the integrity of its trade, improving safety standards, achieving higher pay and benefits such as health care and retirement, increasing the number of employees an employer assigns to complete the work, and better working conditions.

The union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labor contracts (collective bargaining) with employers.

The agreements negotiated by a union are binding on the rank and file members and the employer and in some cases on other non-member workers.

The original civil service legislation allowed federal employees to organize together to protect rights against governmental officials only allowed for employees unionize together and petition the government, but gave them no real bargaining power.

Only when governmental unions were legally recognized as representatives of their workers did conditions improve in their respective organizations.

To Much Red Tape…..

Because Civil Service systems values individual rights as a way of protecting employees from partisan political pressure, complaints from managers (many who are covered by civil service protection) about the red tape and due process that makes it almost impossible to deal personnel issues.

Some feel that because of all the foot dragging, it hardly makes it worth while to even discipline employees.

Red tape is an idiom that refers to excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal rules that is considered redundant or bureaucratic and hinders or prevents action or decision-making.

It is usually applied to governments, corporations, and other large organizations.

Due process is the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights that are owed to a person.

Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual person from it.

When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the law, this constitutes a due process violation, which offends the rule of law.

Contracting Out…

When it comes to political systems and to contracting out, the value of individual rights diminishes in favor of responsiveness and efficiency, respectively.

By contracting out certain services efficiently to the public it saves the taxpayer money therefore bringing down the cost of government…

Much like political appointees who enjoy no employee rights, where their jobs do not fall under merit system provisions, and they are hired, moved, and dismissed based on their value to the one who hired them, contracting out is often seen in a similar manner.

Depending upon the service, the constitutional protections that employees enjoy under a public personnel system are less likely to apply, and due process public employees generally enjoy may be sacrificed to the goal of administrative efficiency and profit.

The Contemporary Scene

The value of efficiency coupled with an emphasis on market-based administrative approaches has truly affected the sanction function… the expectations and obligations of both employees and employers. The three issues that dominate and influence organizational justice are:

Outsourcing…

Transferring service delivery to the private or nonprofit sector through a type of competitive sourcing program…

At-will employment…

Removing positions from the permanent civil service and reallocating them to an unclassified or at-will position.

This appears to restrict the employee’s ability to grieve supervisory decisions and streamline appeal procedures.

Constitutional rights of employees…

Although all employees have constitutional rights, it depends upon the status of the employee…

Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment…

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.

It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

The value of the first Amendment may have more to do with issues of transparency and the robust exchange of ideas, leading to an informed deliberative public than any individual’s right to speak…

Questions:

Has the employee expressed himself or herself on a matter of public concern?

If yes, then how much of the administrative efficiency of the agency has been or is reasonably anticipated to become disrupted?

Is the disruption is sufficient to outweigh the individual’s right to free speech?

Freedom of Association and the First Amendment …

Government have struggled to draw a balance between a responsive and efficient government:

Advocates of responsiveness have generally favored more political control over public bureaucracies;

Advocates of administrative efficiency have fought to keep politics out of administration….

The courts step in (mid-80’s) by limiting the patronage practice of discharging public employees because of political affiliation.

The Court argued that patronage dismissals violated a public employees' First Amendment right to freedom of belief and association ….and

To belong to a political party of choice and maintain one’s own political beliefs.

Privacy, Drug Testing, and the Fourth Amendment ..

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure and is a crucial foundation for privacy.

It does this in law enforcement cases by requiring the searching authority to obtain a warrant prior to the search.

However in some noncriminal cases the government is able to conduct a search without a warrant… one of which is drug testing…

In these situations, no probable cause is required.

A balance test is performed weighing the government’s interest or special need with the individual’s expectation of privacy.

In the past (1987) the court has ruled that government’s interest in maintain an efficient, effective workplace outweighs the privacy interest.

Protecting Employees’ Constitutional Procedural Rights

In light of the concern with both the substance of employee and employer expectations and obligations and the processes by which these issues are established raises the question:

What kind of procedural rights are embraced by the participants that maximizes the value of organizational efficiency?

Property Rights and Due Process

Because public employees have a right to their job, the government is bound by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution requiring that one can deprive an individual of substantive rights like life, liberty or property only after the due process of law… a procedural right.

What is Due Process?

Minimal process requires that an employer notify an employee of the employee’s violation and give the person a chance to state their side of the story…

The critical step in linking due process with fairness comes when the person or board hearing the employee appeal or grievance is not in the employee’s normal chain of command…

What is procedural justice?

It consist of both the policies and methods to make organizational decisions regarding the distribution of rewards and punishments as well as an interpersonal aspect…. The way supervisors and managers implement the policies and methods.

Discipline and Counseling the Unproductive Employee …

Questions first, Actions second…

Am I keeping you awake?

Do you know what a performance discrepancy is?

Are your tasks and conditions of employment reasonable in light of the performance standards set for your assigned position?

Were organizational rules and regulations clearly communicated to you?

Do you know what goals are to be accomplished and what constitutes a satisfactory performance?

Supervisory Actions…

Was the employee’s performance adequately documented and was the employee provided informal and formal feedback on the quality of their performance?

Does the employee have adequate skills to perform the required tasks at the expected level of competence?

Is good performance rewarded, or are there factors in the work environment that make it impossible or punishing to perform well?

Mager’s Performance Analysis

Steps in the Grievance Process …..

Informal counseling…

the success of this step depends on an organizational environment that encourages employees to speak openly about their concerns…

Formal grievance…

if step one is unsuccessful the aggrieved individual should have the opportunity to file a formal grievance in writing stating the problem and what the employee thinks ought to be done to correct the situation.

Consultation between supervisor and personnel director…

after the grievance is filed, the personnel department should consult with the employee to verify the situation and then work with the parties to see if an agreement can be reached..

Investigation/adjudication..

A number of steps can follow the attempt by the personnel department to work out a solution between the parties. This might include:

assigning an impartial … often from the personnel department … to investigate and make a decision;

convening a panel to hear the complaint and make a decision;

and securing an outside arbitrator to hear the complaint and render a decision.

Steps in the Grievance Process …..

Ongoing Issues

Several ongoing substantive and procedural issues illustrate how judicial interpretation of the Constitution supports conflicting values (primarily employee rights and organizational efficiency). These include:

State immunity from federal statues;

Employment eligibility under the Americans with Disability Act (ADA)

Privacy protection of Internet-based communication for public employees;

Protection from sexual harassment;

Protection for “whistle-blowers”

Employee “comfort” versus workforce diversity programming;

And the extent to which contract employees are covered by constitutional rights…